Recovery from flood damage still a work in progress in Murrysville area 2 weeks after storms

Tim Wagner Sr. of Murrysville is disassembling a treadmill in his house to see if he can get it working again.

The exercise equipment is in his basement, which was flooded after an early June storm parked itself over his neighborhood along Hills Church Road.

In the immediate aftermath of the flooding — which required swift-water rescue boat crews to ferry more than 90 people to safety June 6 — Wagner said friends and neighbors all pitched in.

“The next day, I had 20 people show up at the house to help,” he said. “We cleaned everything out of the basement and our garage, sanitized the floor and walls, and then I started on the big appliances, letting them air out for a couple days and then bringing them back inside.”

Wagner said it took about five days of working 12-15 hours per day to get the lower level of the house back in shape. He thanked municipal trash hauler Republic Services for its help as well.

“They took more than half of the stuff we had to get rid of when they came the first time,” he said. “And they took all the rest, furniture and about 10 trash bags worth of stuff, when they came out the next time.”

Heritage trail damage

As homeowners in Murrysville, Monroeville, Penn Township and Export work to remedy water damage from the storm, Westmoreland Heritage Trail officials are working to restore a section that sustained heavy damage.

“Right now we have two or three crews of hired contractors out there working,” said trail President Stan Rudge. “They’re moving east from Trafford.”

Trail board member Patrick Norton said the trail is safe and passable between Haymaker Farm Road in Monroeville and the small trailhead at the intersection of Carson and Braun avenues in Murrysville.

“The rest of the trail to the east is very rough with large sections missing,” Norton said. “From Trafford to the Carson-Braun trailhead, the trail is also rough with hill slides.”

Rudge said it’s unlikely that stretch of the trail will be fully restored for quite a while.

“They’re doing some superficial repairs for now,” he said. “When we did our initial assessment, there’s between 1 and 2 miles where the trail will need totally resurfaced with new crushed limestone, to get it back to where it needs to be.”

Westmoreland County officials also are planning to install a new culvert along the trail near Ginny’s Neighborhood Pizza Joint, where some of the strongest flooding carved a path through the trail.

“All the water that came down Hills Church Road flooded that whole area,” Rudge said. “We’ve never seen flooding like that, so they’re going to install a new culvert there for the future.”

Both Rudge and Norton emphasized that while they were getting assistance from the county with the culvert, the vast majority of funding for trail maintenance comes from memberships and fundraising.

“We allocated about $30,000 from our funds to help with this, and all of that comes from fundraising through memberships and donations,” Rudge said. “We’re digging into our reserves, so some of the other projects in the works will have to be put on hold until we get the trail built back up.”

Norton said a lot of trail users don’t necessarily know it is funded and maintained by volunteers.

“We all benefit from having a special place like the trail to exercise and enjoy nature,” he said. “We volunteer our time because the trail is a special place to get away. Westmoreland Heritage Trail needs you to be a trail member, donate funds or volunteer to get us back up, so we can all start enjoying it again.”

Anyone interested in learning more about trail membership or volunteering can visit WestmorelandHeritageTrail.com.